American gymnastics coach Liang Chow depicted a story of physical and mental growth in his trainee Gabrielle Douglas's path to the Olympics all-around champion on Thursday.

For the Chinese America, it's one of the most successful coaches through the lastest two Olympics with Douglas grabbing her individual all-around and helping team USA snatch the women's team in London.

Gabrielle Douglas of U.S. competes in floor event during women's individual all-around competition of gymnastic artistic at the London 2012 Olympic Games in London, Britain, Aug. 2, 2012. Gabrielle Douglas of U.S. claimed the title in this event. [Xinhua]

Looking back to Beijing, he steered another American gymnast Shawn Johnson to a beam gold and double silver from all-around and team.

"She (Douglas) is mentally strong, not weak as what we see in the competition," said Chow in his first remark for the all-around final and for his master work, retorting doubts from the US gymnastics authority over Douglas's stability and mentality.

Douglas made a bulk of faults in the national championships in 2011 and she was under suspicion of weak in mentality since then even after she won the national Olympic trials. The shadow was there until Douglas proved she's strong minded in the team and individual events with a mistake.

Douglas has been training with Chow for two years and growing from a rookie to an Olympics champion.

"Her routines are kind of lack of quality when she first came to train with me," revealed Chow. "First I need to improve her execution of routine quality."

"She was training hard and made fast progress in terms of routine execution, but a couple of errors in the national championship proved she was weak mentally in competition.

"What I did next is to help her establish confidence and let her know she is good enough to compete with top gymnasts and she need to trust her capability," added Chow.

Chow told Douglas to give what she normally do in the Olympics and try to be herself. Douglas finally learned how to cope with competition and also with herself.

Chow talked with Douglas between each rotation on Thursday. Asked what's the contents they were speaking, Chow refused to tell the details, saying: "I just help her to relax and not think too much about the result and the scores. What I did is trying to distract her from getting nervous."

In comparison over training methods between Johnson and Douglas, Chow takes a way of flexibility.

"Each one has her own features and traits. You can never adopt the same thing on different trainees," said Chow.

"Taking measures suitable for specific problems existed in the gymnast is the best way to make progress."

Hard work is inevitably the path for anyone leading to success. It's the same case for Chow.

"A lot of hard work in training, there is no magic here. A lot of preparations before we come here," added Chow, who admitted he had not taking a vacation for ten years. "It's a lot of success, but every hard work pays off."

Talking about the difference of feeling in producing Olympics champion here and that in Beijing, Chow said: "Finally I can turn the first page for what I achieved four years ago. I can feel I am moving forward and that's what makes me so happy."

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